Professor Lu Kai-yi Awarded National Science Council Wu Ta-you Memorial Awards
NTNU English department professor Lu Kai-yi from Romania studied life writing recent years, opened a new direction for Taiwan academy. She awarded National Science Council Wu Ta-you memorial awards this year. With surprise on her face, she said happily, “I was totally, totally surprised”!
Wu Ta-you Memorial Awards was set to cultivate young science researchers for National Science Council, encouraged society elites to devote to researching studies and to commemorate Mr. Wu Ta-you’s tribute to science development and techniques research. National Science Council not only awarded the prizewinner with a medal and also NT$500000 each year for continuous three years.
For Professor Lu Kai-yi, two reasons she was surprised was because this was her second year to Taiwan only and she was still very young. From preparation to winning the prize, professor Lu Kai-yi described it as a fantasy journey. At the beginning, she only knew that her assistance got an important phone call, asked her to prepare for the life writing research resources. When she finally prepared all the theories and periodical published information and thought it was over, one of her students called and congratulated her for winning the prize.
While she was doing her research, she kept asking herself, “How do you write about your life? Why?” Life writing research was to find out how to reconstruct the past in every unique life story. She studied her hometown, east Europe, to see how they recalled the memory of war and latter communism. She started studying United States culture and literature recently. Combine the research with her teaching, discussed the music, drama, literature, or even lifestyle in United States. We expected her next research would blossom in Taiwan academy.